Framingham man, 10 others to receive France's Legion of Honor

FRAMINGHAM – Seventy years ago today, 19-year-old Arthur Cotton aimed his M-1 rifle at a German plane strafing Utah Beach and fired his first and last shots of the war.

"Didn’t get anywhere close," the 89-year-old said Monday from his Framingham living room. "But at least I got to shoot my gun off."

Cotton, a Navy Seabee, still has the Navy tattoo he got "for about a dollar" in 1943 scrawled on his left arm. The ink has faded, but the memories have not.

"It doesn’t seem like it was 70 years ago," said Cotton. "It feels like 15 years ago."

Today, Cotton will be one of 11 veterans to receive the highest honor from the French government, the Legion of Honor, at a ceremony at the Museum of World War II in Natick.

"I’m very excited for him," said his wife, Rosalie. She said her husband has always been modest about his service.

"I’m the CEO," she said. "He’s the quiet one."

Flipping through pages of photographs from the war given to him by his company's photographer, Cotton spoke about June 6, 1944 as if it were yesterday.

As a member of the 81st Naval Construction Battalion – nicknamed "Seabee" from the initials CB – Cotton’s job was to get equipment from LSTs and other seafaring crafts to the beach.

The Landing Ship, Tank ("we called them Large Slow Targets") carried tanks and other vehicles that needed to get to shore. It was the Seabees’ job to bring the vehicles from the ships to the beach on large pontoons called Rhino ferries.

"My job up front was to drop the ramp down," Cotton said, and hope the German guns didn’t get him in the process.

Cotton said he wasn’t really scared during the invasion.

"To me, it felt like acting in a movie," he said - something much larger than himself. Though he prefers to remember the good and not the bad, he said he did see some tough things when he first got ashore.

"There was somebody’s nose lying on the beach," he remembered, and bodies were being stacked up against a wall.

Cotton’s ferry was one of just a handful to arrive on Utah Beach on D-Day. Several of the ferries were shot at from the shore or bombed from overhead. On one barge, one Seabee was killed and 11 wounded by a German bomb.

"We just ducked down out of the way," Cotton said as he remembered the German plane that fired on the beach upon his arrival.

Cotton stayed on the beach all day, intervening at one point when a large hole bored in the ocean floor by a shell began to trip up soldiers who fell into it carrying their large packs.

Page 2 of 2 - Cotton said he and a few others went about chest high in the water around the hole and helped the soldiers navigate around it.

"We grabbed a couple of them and pulled them out," Cotton said, before standing in front of the hole and directing men elsewhere until the tide receded.

Cotton received a Bronze Star for his Normandy service, as well as a second Bronze Star at Okinawa. But he won’t call himself a hero.

"I didn’t get wounded," he said. "I didn’t save anybody’s life."

After the Japanese surrendered, Cotton served occupation duty near Nagasaki, one of two cities decimated by atomic bombs.

"We took a trip there in the truck with our chaplain," he remembered. "It was pretty well destroyed. There wasn’t much of it left at all."

Cotton said his most vivid memories from the war aren’t those of death and destruction, but of mirth and camaraderie. For instance, he’s still eternally grateful to his commander for allowing him and a few others to hop the "Red Ball Express" to Paris a few days after it was liberated even though they had no reason to go there.

When spotted in their Navy blues by Army brass, Cotton and his buddies were taken to the stockade, where they were only released after promising they’d return to their units.

"We went back to our hotel and changed into army uniforms," he said, grinning. "We went back out around the city for four days. Nobody bothered us."

Cotton’s son is flying in from Guam to attend today’s ceremony, while his daughter Maureen Gallen, who helped get him the award, is flying in from California.

"It’s really nice," he said of the honor, before his wife reminded him he had to get going. The active octogenarian still cuts grass at the Pine Brook Country Club in Weston four days a week, and on this Monday, had a 3 p.m. tee time with friends.

Other World War II veterans receiving the Legion today include Harry Baker, an Army investigation officer from Weston, and James Zographos, a Westborough Army man who has received six Bronze stars and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Brad Petrishen can be reached at 508-490-7463 or bpetrishen@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @BPetrishen_MWDN.